WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.819 Have you ever asked yourself how we even know 00:00:02.819 --> 00:00:05.740 about the life of Muhammad? Where did the story 00:00:05.740 --> 00:00:09.000 of Islam's prophet actually come from? Most people 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:11.820 assume we simply have the Quran. But the earliest 00:00:11.820 --> 00:00:14.320 and most detailed records about Muhammad's life 00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:17.460 come from what are called the biographies, or 00:00:17.460 --> 00:00:20.620 the seerah. The first major biography of Muhammad 00:00:20.620 --> 00:00:24.179 was written by a man named Ibn Ishaq. He was 00:00:24.179 --> 00:00:27.739 born in the year 85 after the Hijra. That means 00:00:27.739 --> 00:00:31.519 about 76 years after Muhammad's death. Ibn Ishaq 00:00:31.519 --> 00:00:35.859 died in the year 151 after the Hijrah. His work 00:00:35.859 --> 00:00:38.799 has reached us through two main sources. One 00:00:38.799 --> 00:00:42.200 is the biography written by Ibn Hisham. The other 00:00:42.200 --> 00:00:44.659 is the great history compiled by Al -Tabari. 00:00:44.859 --> 00:00:48.200 Ibn Hisham took Ibn Ishaq's original biography 00:00:48.200 --> 00:00:52.240 and edited it heavily. He removed parts he did 00:00:52.240 --> 00:00:55.320 not like or thought were inappropriate. He admitted 00:00:55.320 --> 00:00:57.640 that he left out material that had no direct 00:00:57.640 --> 00:01:00.399 mention of the prophet. He also avoided including 00:01:00.399 --> 00:01:03.840 poems that seemed unreliable. He even removed 00:01:03.840 --> 00:01:07.079 things he considered morally disgraceful or that 00:01:07.079 --> 00:01:10.019 might upset certain listeners. In other words, 00:01:10.060 --> 00:01:12.920 Ibn Hisham let his personal view of what a prophet 00:01:12.920 --> 00:01:16.040 should or should not be shape what he decided 00:01:16.040 --> 00:01:18.840 to keep. He also cared about how people might 00:01:18.840 --> 00:01:21.780 react emotionally to the more troubling stories. 00:01:22.569 --> 00:01:24.909 Thankfully, al -Tabari preserved many of the 00:01:24.909 --> 00:01:27.810 missing sections that Ibn Hisham deleted. Later, 00:01:27.909 --> 00:01:30.810 the scholar Alfred Guillaume compared both works 00:01:30.810 --> 00:01:34.030 and reconstructed what he could of Ibn Ishaq's 00:01:34.030 --> 00:01:36.909 original writings. Now this pattern has continued 00:01:36.909 --> 00:01:40.189 into modern times. Many Muslim biographers today 00:01:40.189 --> 00:01:43.129 follow the same approach as Ibn Hisham. They 00:01:43.129 --> 00:01:45.890 often remove anything they think sounds unflattering 00:01:45.890 --> 00:01:48.930 or disagreeable to the image of a prophet. A 00:01:48.930 --> 00:01:51.290 clear example comes from the popular Egyptian 00:01:51.290 --> 00:01:54.750 author Muhammad Hussein Haikal. His book about 00:01:54.750 --> 00:01:57.450 the prophet, called The Life of Muhammad, is 00:01:57.450 --> 00:02:00.469 one of the best -known modern biographies. In 00:02:00.469 --> 00:02:03.150 the preface to the second edition, Haikal explained 00:02:03.150 --> 00:02:06.329 why he rejected the famous account of the Satanic 00:02:06.329 --> 00:02:08.909 verses, even though the story is found in the 00:02:08.909 --> 00:02:11.930 earliest sources. Haikal said that he refused 00:02:11.930 --> 00:02:14.870 to accept it. because it denied what he believed 00:02:14.870 --> 00:02:17.830 to be the infallibility of prophets in delivering 00:02:17.830 --> 00:02:20.990 divine messages. He also argued that the story 00:02:20.990 --> 00:02:23.590 failed to meet what he called modern scientific 00:02:23.590 --> 00:02:27.210 standards. But notice the reasoning here. Haikal 00:02:27.210 --> 00:02:30.110 starts from the assumption that a prophet cannot 00:02:30.110 --> 00:02:33.629 make a mistake when conveying revelation. He 00:02:33.629 --> 00:02:36.689 then uses that presupposition to reject a story 00:02:36.689 --> 00:02:39.770 that challenges it. Yet the problem is that his 00:02:39.770 --> 00:02:42.449 assumption directly contradicts the Quran itself. 00:02:43.099 --> 00:02:45.879 According to early Islamic tradition, the Quran 00:02:45.879 --> 00:02:50.099 in Surah 22 verse 52 was given to Muhammad right 00:02:50.099 --> 00:02:53.120 after the incident of the satanic verses to comfort 00:02:53.120 --> 00:02:56.199 him. In the translation by Al -Hilali and Khan, 00:02:56.479 --> 00:02:59.479 it says that no messenger or prophet was ever 00:02:59.479 --> 00:03:02.919 sent before Muhammad without Satan trying to 00:03:02.919 --> 00:03:05.340 inject something false during the recitation. 00:03:05.659 --> 00:03:08.960 But God removes what Satan throws in and then 00:03:08.960 --> 00:03:12.550 restores his revelation. That verse fits perfectly 00:03:12.550 --> 00:03:15.150 with the historical story of the Satanic verses 00:03:15.150 --> 00:03:18.590 described by Ibn Ishaq and the early historians. 00:03:19.030 --> 00:03:21.349 It seems to confirm that something like that 00:03:21.349 --> 00:03:24.129 really happened. If someone wants to deny this 00:03:24.129 --> 00:03:26.430 tradition, then they would need to provide an 00:03:26.430 --> 00:03:29.090 older and stronger source that explains this 00:03:29.090 --> 00:03:31.949 verse differently. Simply dismissing the story 00:03:31.949 --> 00:03:34.050 without presenting better historical evidence 00:03:34.050 --> 00:03:37.310 is not serious scholarship. It is a rejection 00:03:37.310 --> 00:03:39.990 of the very historical record that defines early 00:03:39.990 --> 00:03:43.590 Islam. Haikal's approach may look like it protects 00:03:43.590 --> 00:03:47.050 Muhammad's reputation, yet it does so at the 00:03:47.050 --> 00:03:49.710 cost of rejecting both the earliest biographies 00:03:49.710 --> 00:03:52.889 and the teaching of the Quran itself. So here 00:03:52.889 --> 00:03:56.490 is the bigger question. If Surah 22 verse 52 00:03:56.490 --> 00:03:59.770 tells us that even prophets can be deceived temporarily 00:03:59.770 --> 00:04:02.750 by Satan, but that God corrects them afterward, 00:04:03.110 --> 00:04:05.669 how can someone still hold to the modern assumption 00:04:05.669 --> 00:04:08.650 that prophets are infallible in receiving revelation? 00:04:09.469 --> 00:04:12.050 Haikal never explained where his belief came 00:04:12.050 --> 00:04:15.310 from or why it should override what the Quran 00:04:15.310 --> 00:04:18.529 and the earliest historians actually say. In 00:04:18.529 --> 00:04:21.069 doing so, he replaced the historical religion 00:04:21.069 --> 00:04:24.509 of Islam with a more modern and idealized version 00:04:24.509 --> 00:04:27.930 that ignores its own sources. When we look honestly 00:04:27.930 --> 00:04:30.790 at the biographies, we see that early Islamic 00:04:30.790 --> 00:04:34.410 history is far more complex and human than many 00:04:34.410 --> 00:04:37.459 people realize. Ibn Ishaq wrote close enough 00:04:37.459 --> 00:04:40.279 to Muhammad's lifetime to preserve valuable details. 00:04:40.800 --> 00:04:43.819 Ibn Hisham and Haikal each trimmed away what 00:04:43.819 --> 00:04:46.300 they thought was uncomfortable. And the Quran 00:04:46.300 --> 00:04:49.500 itself provides internal clues that match those 00:04:49.500 --> 00:04:53.120 early reports. All this matters because to understand 00:04:53.120 --> 00:04:56.600 Islam as it really began, we must read the Sirah 00:04:56.600 --> 00:04:59.759 critically. Not through the lens of modern assumptions, 00:04:59.839 --> 00:05:02.199 but through the evidence that the earliest sources 00:05:02.199 --> 00:05:03.240 actually provide.